Articles

President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union Address to Congress touched on a few policy areas of concern to the insights industry, including privacy, artificial intelligence (AI) and research subjects who receive incentives.

This month, the Insights Association focused on extensive artificial intelligence legislation at the state level, urgent developments in privacy compliance in California and Washington state, new bills on census issues (including one that would kill the ACS), the insights compliance concerns with sales taxes on SaaS and PaaS, and a couple of new telephone-related bills.

Kicking off another year of advocacy for the insights industry, the Insights Association focused in January on proposed children’s privacy rules, a new tax bill in Nebraska, turning 529 accounts into career savings plans, a proposed tax on displacing employees with any kind of technology, and the Biden Administration’s extensive new artificial intelligence policies… and lots more!

As the insights industry closes out 2023 on the calendar, the Insights Association looked back at our advocacy wins and losses on various consumer data privacy issues, and taxes, while checking in on legislation, regulation, and laws at the state and federal level on privacy, taxes, the independent contractor status of research subjects, and artificial intelligence.

During recent conversations with leaders at market research agencies and corporate insights departments, current and future use of AI in our work and is a persistent topic. Some leaders in the space fully believe that AI, and generative tools, will be as important an evolution as the migration to online. More powerful Generative AI applications can bring welcomed time, cost, and quality efficiencies, but can also enable more sophisticated and harder-to-detect fraud.

As Halloween rapidly approaches, the Insights Association is searching for treats in legislation and regulation while trying to defuse the tricks that may pose a threat to the insights industry. In October, we looked at the FTC and some privacy legislation concerns, argued against proposed state data taxes, analyzed AI regulatory proposals, looked at new non-compete restrictions in California, and new federal registration responsibilities for a lot of small insights businesses.

While temperatures are starting to dip, concerns still simmered in September for the insights industry as we dealt with more new state privacy laws, burgeoning regulation of AI, and other pressing advocacy issues.

As we close out an intense summer for the insights industry, the Insights Association has been focused on a wide variety of policy issues, including: the launch of a new program for legally transferring European Union personal data to the U.S.; looming worries in complying with state comprehensive consumer data privacy laws that came into effect on July 1, and newly-passed state laws in Florida and Tennessee; the latest developments in compliance concerns and regulation of artificial intelligenc...

As temperatures rose, so did the threats and opportunities for the insights industry in advocacy during May, ranging from three new comprehensive state privacy laws, advancing regulation of artificial intelligence, compliance concerns with state sales taxes, jousting over the Census Household Panel, restrictions on high-end incentives for research subjects, state legislation to ban non-competes, and a new Maryland law restricting most telephone calls for research purposes.

The insights industry faced challenges on multiple advocacy fronts in April, such as: growing risks from the boom in generative AI; new privacy laws and regulations; an FTC proposal to eliminate noncompete agreements; a new attempt at insourcing insights work by the Census Bureau; and a proposed new tax on data in Nevada.